The latest film by Panahi, the Iranian director sentenced to home confinement, a meditation on the relationship between the filmmaker, his creation and the real world, again testifying to the fact that a free and creative spirit will not be suppressed by any authority.
They are both on the run: the man with the dog he isn’t allowed to own because Islamic law deems it to be unclean, and the young woman who took part in an illicit party. They barricade themselves into a secluded villa with curtained windows and eye each other suspiciously despite a certain partnership in crime. The voices of police can be heard in the distance, but so too can the calming sound of the sea. Suddenly, the director enters the scene and the curtains are pulled open. Reality reinstates itself, but fiction closes in on it again and again.
“Closed Curtain uses shifting genres and stories within stories to highlight why filmmaking is a necessity in a filmmaker's life: it is the imperative need to show the reality of the world we live in.” (Jafar Panahi)